Their Finest

Those Germans are being beastly and we want the Americans to come to our rescue: sound familiar?

Not the Brexit talks, no – that drama will follow shortly – but the Blitz. This is a film about the production unit that made propaganda films to prop up British morale during World War Two. Bill Nighy has a turn as a pretentious, weathered thespian and he is very convincing – surprise, surprise – and there is, as well, romance and humour and heartbreak and a surfeit of sentimentality.

To be fair, mind, while it is manipulative it is what I would call a ‘Richard Curtis plus film’ – meaning that there are some memorable scenes in between all the sentimental sludge. Such as the bombing of a shop where a woman reacts with horror (she and we see body parts strewn everywhere), then relief (it is just a display mannequin), then horror…